Fall 2008

INTRO TEXT The young man in a tattered baseball cap walked up to Sharon Adair’s table at the Ward 5 polling place near City Hall in Concord, New Hampshire. Daniel Taylor wasn’t on the list of registered voters for the September primary, but that didn’t stop him. Adair confirmed that Taylor’s driver’s license had a(...)

It’s hard to be optimistic about the newspaper business these days, but Kirk Davis is trying. Davis is the president and publisher of GateHouse Media New England, which owns more than 100 newspapers in eastern Massachusetts — and which itself is part of GateHouse Media, a national chain of some 500 papers based near Rochester,(...)

INTRO TEXT A law designed to shine a bright light on the inner workings of state and local government in Massachusetts is instead leaving much of the bureaucracy in shadows, if not total darkness. A seven-month investigation by CommonWealth revealed that public officials at all levels of government frequently game the Massachusetts Public Records Law,(...)

A proposal to eliminate the state’s income tax is back on the ballot this year, after losing 40 percent to 48 percent, with 12 percent of voters blanking on the question, six years ago. That vote coincided with a gubernatorial election in which Republican Mitt Romney did not endorse the measure but ran a “tough(...)

“So, what do you do?” My friend visiting from San Francisco stifled a laugh when she heard this familiar line at a cocktail party. She has a theory that Bostonians can’t use any other question to start a conversation with a stranger — and, furthermore, that until we’ve established what a person does (meaning gainful(...)

I first met Colman Herman, the author of this issue’s cover story on the Massachusetts Public Records Law, years ago when I was a Boston Globe reporter. He had asked Attorney General Thomas Reilly to enforce the state’s item pricing law. When Reilly did nothing, Herman sought to enforce the law on his own with(...)

Cut the waste and build the economy Why are 1.35 million Massachusetts voters already planning to vote yes on Question 1 to end the state income tax? Should you join them? There are three things to consider: what the debate is, government by the numbers, and why the people of Massachusetts benefit if you vote(...)

the job of being the voice of consumers in government has been vacant for years in Massachusetts. Not since the ’80s and early ’90s have we had political figures who made long-term commitments to consumer issues and were vocal advocates for the rights of the little guy. Back then, we were a state that prided(...)

states and cities in the US spend more than $50 billion a year in the name of economic development. But these subsidies to create and retain jobs, called everything from “business incentives” to “corporate welfare,” are one of the most poorly understood forms of state spending. The average state has more than 30 subsidy programs,(...)

The occasion was an NAACP dinner to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision outlawing school segregation, but Bill Cosby was in no mood to celebrate. Instead, when the famed entertainer rose to offer remarks to the Washington gathering in May 2004, he delivered a withering condemnation of the values(...)